Cops

Guy walks into a bar on a night reserved for off-duty police and pointedly ignores the bartender's advice to leave because “the place gets rowdy - and not in a fun way.” The warning comes true with a vengeance: Anyone looking for trouble has come to the right place in “Cops and Friends of Cops,” writer-director Ron Klier's edgy new suspense drama. VS. Theatre Company's continuing commitment to challenging work and high quality staging is immediately apparent in the company's first production in its new home (the former Black Dahlia Theatre)

Surveillance video obtained by detectives investigating Justin Bieber allegedly shows him high-fiving friends moments after eggs were thrown at his ex-neighbor's house in Calabasas, an investigator wrote in an affidavit. Los Angeles County prosecutors are considering whether to charge the 20-year-old Canadian-born recording artist with felony vandalism after a neighbor reported the eggs caused several thousand dollars in permanent damage to his home. Bieber, through his attorney, has denied any wrongdoing.

Re "Take guns from fired cops," Column, Feb. 11 George Skelton's argument is illogical. The ex-cop Christopher Dorner was fired for making false reports, which doesn't necessarily indicate a predisposition toward violence that would require his gun-ownership rights to be revoked. Several years had passed since his firing before he allegedly went on a killing spree. Several journalists have lied in print. I would expect Skelton to give equal accounting to them and have their guns confiscated.

A man believed to be armed with a shotgun barricaded himself inside of a disabled veterans facility in Woodland Hills on Friday and has threatened to kill himself, authorities said. Los Angeles police responded to reports of a barricaded gunman in the 6500 block of Corbin Avenue around 7:30 a.m., said Los Angeles police Cmdr. Andy Smith. Helicopters and a SWAT team were dispatched to the scene and authorities have evacuated the surrounding areas, Smith added. The man is not believed to be a veteran, but he worked in the military for six months, said LAPD Cpt. Charles Hearn, who did not specify which branch.

Re "Where was help for Alesia?," Column, Sept. 8 As long as we as a society are comfortable with the decision we made to have law enforcement agencies be our front-line social service workers, we should not be surprised to see officers handle mental or medical emergencies like criminal acts. If you are disturbed by the story that a poor single mother is dead because leaving her children at a police station is considered "endangerment," or that the mentally ill continue to die at the hands of the justice system, perhaps it's time we recognize again that these are not crimes.

Re "$6 Million to Be Paid in 9 Police Suits," Dec. 18: The Los Angeles Police Department disciplines police officers with exemplary records for breaking the code of silence and reporting on the misdeeds of bad officers. The good cops have their names splashed in the newspapers and are outcasts from the department. The bad cops keep their jobs and remain anonymous to continue their illegal activities while the taxpayers fork out millions of dollars for the good cops to stay quiet and go away.

Re "Numbers game," Opinion, Jan. 14 Jim Newton's column regarding the significance of the Los Angeles Police Department achieving 10,000 officers misses the mark. When the mayor started his first term in 2005, there were 9,284 officers. Today there are 10,023. Despite deep fiscal cuts to the LAPD, the mayor and the City Council have worked with the department in allowing it to find the least harmful ways to absorb these cuts. Instead of simply cutting the number of officers, the city's leaders held firm, and the result is the 10th straight year of crime reduction.

April 22, 2014 | By Hailey Branson-Potts, This post has been corrected. See the note below for details.

Hundreds of uniformed police officers gathered in downtown Los Angeles early Tuesday to pay their final respects to a veteran LAPD motorcycle officer who died earlier this month after being struck by a driver suspected of being under the influence of cocaine. A 26-year veteran of the LAPD, Christopher Cortijo, 51, had been assigned to the Valley Traffic Division when he was struck from behind on April 5 by an SUV. At a funeral Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, colleagues remembered him as a man who so cherished his role as a motorcycle cop that he wore a leather motorcycle jacket even in the soaring San Fernando Valley heat.

The cathedral was full - the choir seats filled by uniformed police officers - but it was silent as the microphone was lowered for the little boy. Ten-year-old Jonathan Navarro looked out at the hundreds of officers seated before him to mourn his uncle, LAPD Officer Christopher A. Cortijo, and began speaking directly to the fallen officer. "Uncle Chris, I will always remember you," he said. "You took your time with me and treated me with tough love. You are my hero. " Hundreds of people gathered in downtown Los Angeles early Tuesday to pay their final respects to Cortijo, a Los Angeles Police Department motorcycle officer who died earlier this month after being struck by a driver suspected of being under the influence of cocaine.

A man who allegedly used Facebook to try to recruit a 17-year-old girl for prostitution has been charged with human trafficking, Orange County prosecutors said. Dwight Lamith Garris, 34, allegedly believed he had befriended a minor, but he was actually communicating with an undercover Anaheim police officer, the Orange County district attorney's office said Monday in a statement. Garris, a Palmdale resident, tried to recruit the girl over a period of about eight days in early April to work as a prostitute and to recruit other sex workers for him, according to the statement.

Surrounded by police, a suspected serial killer in Anaheim quickly sliced the GPS device from his ankle, hopped on a bicycle and pedaled across the street. The registered sex offender didn't get far, said Ian Pummel, the owner of an Anaheim auto body shop where Steven Dean Gordon worked. Gordon and a second man are now in custody, charged with raping and killing four women. Police said both were on probation and wearing court-issued GPS devices when they committed the crimes, which date to last fall.

This post has been corrected. See note below for details. Veteran Los Angeles Police Department motorcycle officer Chris Cortijo, who died Wednesday after being hit by a driver accused of being high on cocaine, had arrested more than 3,000 DUI suspects in his career, Police Chief Charlie Beck said. "The ultimate irony is that Chris spent his life keeping other people safe from people who drive under the influence," Beck said. "The ultimate in tragedy is that he gave his life up because of somebody who callously ... operated a vehicle under the influence.

In Los Angeles, patrol officers are caught disabling recording equipment that was in place to keep them honest. In Santa Monica, a high school student demonstrates why the wrestling coach is the last faculty member to mess with. And in Glendale, a young woman challenges the definition of "hands-free" driving after getting a ticket for talking on a phone tucked into her head scarf. These three police blotter tales have little in common, except that I've assembled them in a nice spring bouquet, along with a prickly observation or two. First the LAPD.

Re "A manhunt, and bad judgment," Editorial, Feb. 6 I'm a retired cop - a former lieutenant with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, actually. As such, when it comes to officer-involved shootings, I'm naturally biased in favor of the officers. I steadfastly try not to second-guess them. Startlingly, I find myself in complete agreement with your editorial supporting the decision by Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck that the officers who fired at a truck carrying two women last February violated department policy.

Re "Supreme Court Debates Traffic Violation Arrests," Dec. 5: Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's attitude toward the cop who handcuffed and jailed a woman because she and her kids weren't seat-belted was, "It is not a constitutional violation for a police officer to be a jerk." How would he have felt if it was his daughter or granddaughter who experienced this trauma? If a policeman can be excused from such disgusting behavior by just admitting to being a jerk, then we'll soon have a police state.

Jesse Snodgrass had recently transferred to Chaparral High School in Temecula and was feeling out of place and alone in 2012 when a boy named Dan, another newcomer, befriended him. Jesse, a 17-year-old autistic student, wasn't good at making friends and he was pleased by the overture. But there was something he didn't know about Dan: He was an undercover narcotics officer attending class at Chaparral hoping to bust student drug dealers. Dan quickly began exerting pressure on Jesse to sneak a pill from his parent's medicine cabinet or buy him some marijuana.

One of the former Fullerton police officers acquitted in the beating death of Kelly Thomas now wants immunity from possible federal prosecution before he speaks with lawyers in a pending wrongful-death suit. Manuel Ramos, a former city patrolman who was accused of murder in the 2011 death of the homeless man, is set to be deposed April 15 in a wrongful-death suit filed by Thomas' father. But federal prosecutors are also looking into Thomas' death, though the U.S. Justice Department has not said whether it would try to prosecute Ramos or any of the other former officers in the beating case.